Cost has always been an issue for the adaptation of Stephen King's It. Once set up at Warner Bros., it was dropped and eventually found a new home at New Line Cinema, where cost-cutting began in earnest. Will Poulter of The Maze Runner and We're the Millers recently agreed to play the evil clown Pennywise, but the big draw has been True Detective director Cary Fukunaga. Unfortunately, that will no longer be the case.
The Wrap reports that Fukunaga has dropped out of It due to further budget cuts. Both sides clashed on a new creative vision for the film, and Fukunaga decided it wasn't worth it and left. The studio apparently was spooked by the $23M opening weekend for Poltergeist because, get this, it had a clown in the marketing. Wow, that's weak sauce but it gives you an idea of the small-ish reasons studios have for making drastic changes.
So now it's up in the air whether It will happen at all. Remember, the film was to be split into two features, one following Pennywise's victims as kids and another as adults. There may be an attempt to tweak it into one single film now as a way of keeping costs down.
